1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for providing a remedy for a failure of a product. In particular, it relates to a system that provides a remedy for a failure of a product composing a plurality of parts, such as a vehicle, in response to input of information on the failure.
2. Description of the Related Art
Reactions of repair shops or dealers to failures or troubles of a sophisticated product, such as a vehicle, depend on experience of service staff that deals with the failures. In order to enable staff with little experience to readily deal with a failure, an instruction manual may be prepared. However, it is burdensome to prepare repair manuals for products appearing one after another. Such burdensomeness is encountered when the manuals are to be updated by reflecting accumulated experiences.
It may be contemplated that a database for the manual is provided on a computer network, and a service staff accesses the manual as required. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-160097 describes maintenance of an air conditioner or the like, in which a memory that stores know-how is provided, a weight of attribute information, such as an experienced staff, is stored therein, and a support staff is retrieved according to the weight, whereby the user and the support staff can cooperate with each other.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-154848 describes a problem-solving support system. An input query description that is short of conditions is compensated for with an optimal condition extracted from similar cases that were solved in the past. A problem-solving process is executed for the input question thus made up for.
A products, such as an automobile and motorcycle, that is composed of quite many parts and includes many movable parts shows various symptoms depending on the usage conditions, the length of usage, the maintenance condition or the like. When a user asks a repair shop, service center or the like to repair a product in a failure or trouble, he/she explains the trouble in words. Therefore, there is a need for a troubleshooting support system that has a function of retrieving an optimal remedy based on words in a user's speech.